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The article will cover how to integrate BICS, PBCS, DBCS and ODI and will explain step by step how to create a 100% cloud solution using ODI (everything on the cloud including ODI :)).

This is a perfect article for companies that are thinking to go cloud and have some doubts or even are thinking how you can integrate/use your actual infrastructure with the cloud services.

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Hi all, today I decided to get out of my comfort zone to talk about the in-place OWB migration and a little bit of infrastructure. I decided to do that because the follow reasons:

First, I hate infrastructure, probably because I am not good at it and in all clients that I’ve worked, this is always a headache. Some times because it is poorly done, some others because everything grows but the infra. But the worst part is:

Nobody knows Hyperion or the BI tools enougth and in the end when something bad happens, it ends up that I’ll need to fix the problem, and normally there’re two problems, the infra itself and the guys from the infra asking for evidences that the issue is from infra. Sorry guys, but this is a consultant point of view J

Second, because it took me 2 days to understand what was the OWB migration and how to do it.

Third, I searched the entire internet and did not find any complete step-by-step tutorial about it. Probably because the Migration happens to be the database migration not the OWB migration.

Before I start, let me talk a little about my infra. As I said, I hate infra and I am not good at it then please consider this post as a tentative to help people and not an absolute truth coming from an expert or something.

Because I hate infra, I tried to make mine the best it could be (or at least, the best I could make it).

The Server:

This is a cheap machine (even in Brazil that everything is expensiveJ). I only upgraded it with 32 gb of memory and by now has only one HD with 1 Tb (I have more HD in my drawers But I’m not needing it by now).

The Virtualization Software:

For this server I installed in a 1 Gb pendrive the VMware ESXi 5.1.0. This is a good tip, the ESXi is by far (and I mean lightning years far) the best virtualization software in the market, and for a server with max 32 Gb memory, it’s for free.

The VMs:

I have six VMs up and running all the time in this server. Never had any performance issue, in fact they are a lot faster than the servers in some of my clients are. Of course, I have a clean installation of everything.

By the name of the machines you guys could figure out that I like old mythology J and I’ll explain the infra using it.

First we have Cerberus, the hell hound that has a zentail installed on it to protect the entrance of the hell realm. Also it’s used to external access, VPN, FTP and DNS.

Then we have Tartarus, the realm of the dead’s, and also what supports the earth (or gaia that’s the name of my extra net). This is an oracle 11g Database, because all the repositories are on it. It is the base for everything.

Also I have Niflheim, that’s almost the same thing but for the Nordics. This is an Oracle 12c database. There are Golden gates running between both databases for replication and test proporses.

After that, I have Olympus, where all the foundation, planning, eas server and reports are installed.

Then we have Pantheon, which is on top of Olympus, where OBIEE and Endeca is installed.

All these machines are running on top of Oracle unbreakable Linux OS.

In the end, we have Hyperion, which is a Windows server 2008 R2 machine where I have only Essbase and ODI agent installed. Why I did that, because both tools heavily use the file system and using windows make everything a lot easier to access, configure, and work with.

Also, I found in an old version of Essbase (11.1.1.3) that some ESSCMD commands doesn’t exists in Linux, like “deploy studio” command. I had a client that had to migrate the Essbase to windows because this and some performance issues.

However, the thing was the file system and I installed some clients in this machine this way my friends needs only my VPN and a terminal Server to access this machine and make some tests.

Enough about my infra and let us talk about the migration. First of all there’s no OWB migration. OWB is not like ODI that you need just to get/patch of a new version and update the repository.

For OWB you need to upgrade the entire database, and then you can connect using your new client (and if you use windows, you will not have the client in the same version of the repository. However, we’ll talk about this later).

Ok, sinceI do not like to have many oracle homes in my server I decided to do an “In-Place” upgrade. Upgrade is a strong word for this because it is an installation from the scratch not a patch or something.

If you have any type of Virtualization now is an excellent time to create a snapshot from your database. Thanks God I did that because he knows, I needed.

Ok, after try a lot of stuff and commands that never worked I did it in my way, and worked, then please if someone see something incredibly ugly (and maybe I’ll not know that it was an ugly thing) please let me know.

Basically for the “In-Place” installation we need to deceive Oracle installer to believe that your server has no other oracle instance. For this, you need to detach the oracle home from your inventory.xml. Oracle give us a command that I could never make it work:

I found other “Versions” of this command but I couldn’t make any of them works as well. Then I had to find my own version, which I can guarantee, it is a lot easier that this command. Rename the “inventory.xml” to anything you want. In my case this files is in this folder:

/u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/

This will make the oracle installer believe that he will be the firstJ.

After that you need just to rename the dbhome folder or the version folder, anyone will do the trick.

/u01/app/oracle/product/

Renaming the folder will remove any need of backups because everything you need will be there.

Cool, after these two-steps you can install the DB software. Make sure to install only the software. The DB we will migrate later on.

I will not cover the installation here because even I did not have any issue with that, and, there are many tutorials that cover the installation in the internet. Basically you need only to click in next and remember to select software only. That is all.

Ok, after the software install we need to copy some files from the backup that we did when we renamed our previous directory.

We need to copy everything that is inside the folder “dbs” to the new “dbs” Folder. For me the path is like this:

/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1/dbs/

Doing that you have the initialization files from the old db in the new one.

Also copy the files in the follow folder to the respective ones in the new installation:

ORACLE_HOME/network/admin

ORACLE_HOME/hostname_dbname

ORACLE_HOME/oc4j/j2ee/OC4J_DBConsole_hostname_dbname

ORACLE_HOME/owb/network/admin

With this, we have everything to upgrade the old db to the new version. Now we need to connect in the sqlplus as sysdba:

Go to the folder $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/ (this is the location of all sql we need to run to upgrade the repository) and then:

$ sqlplus / as sysdba

We need not to start the DB in upgrade mode. For this:

SQL> startup UPGRADE;

This will mount the database but will give access only for sysdba users. Now we just need to run the follow scripts:

Pre-Upgrade Script

SQL> spool upgrade_info.log

SQL> @utlu112i.sql

SQL> spool off

(This is a pre-upgrade script. Oracle said to copy it from the rdbms directory but I didn’t get why then.. If you have any problem please follow oracle orientations);

Upgrade Script

SQL> spool upgrade_info.log

SQL> @catupgrd.sql

SQL> spool off

(This is the upgrade script. It takes a while to run then, be patient);

Pos upgrade scripts

SQL> spool pos_upgrade_info.log

SQL> @utlu112s.sql

SQL> spool off

(This script provides a summary of the upgrade at the end of the spool log. It displays the status of the database components in the upgraded database and the time required to complete each component upgrade. Any errors that occur during the upgrade are listed with each component and must be addressed)

Recompile Invalid Objects

SQL> @utlrp.sql

(This will recompile any remaining stored PL/SQL and Java code in another session)

After this, we need just to:

SQL> shutdown immediate;

SQL> startup;

That’s it. Everything I did to upgrade the Oracle database in place. As I said, I am not a DBA and probably if a DBA read this post he will laugh, a lot, but it worked and it was the only way I found to do it.

The Client

Ok now, if you have your client in a windows machine, you will realize that oracle did not release a windows version for the OWB client 11.2.0.4. The latest client for windows is in the 11.2.0.3 version. However, Oracle said that this version is fully supported to work with the 11.2.0.4 version. You need only to:

Download the 11.2.0.3 version for windows:

Install the patch 16568042:

Change the file:

$OWB_HOME/owb/bin/admin/Preference.properties

Set:

OverrideRepositoryVersionCheck=true

OverrideRuntimeVersionCheck=true

That is it. You database is upgraded, your client is upgraded and you need only to upgrade the OWB repository. I will not cover this here because this can be found in the internet easily.

Also, if you want to change the language of your OWB client you need only to:

Open $ORACLE_HOME/ide/bin/ide.conf and add the following line to the file:

AddVMOption -Duser.language=en

I know that this is very different from what we have been posting here but it took me 2 days to make this works, and I do not want anybody else losing other 2 days to do something, that in the end was very simple. If you think of it now, for the “In-place” migration we only need to:

Rename the inventory.xml file;

Rename the db_home or the 11.2.0 folder;

Install the new version of the software;

Copy some files from the old install to the new one;

Run three scripts;

That is all. I wish you guys found this useful and until next time. Thank you.